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TWD- Baking with Julia- Hungarian Shortbread

I was so pleased when I read the Hungarian Shortbread recipe. I moved into my home eight years ago. Every April/May two beautiful bunches of rhubarb spring up from the ground and mark the change of seasons. Every year I swear I will make something delicious with them and most years I don’t. This year I went down to the backyard with a purpose and cut this gorgeous bunch of rhubarb.

The rhubarb jam that sandwiches between the two layers of shortbread was easy to make and really tasty. I think I will harvest the rest of the rhubarb for more jam for toast or sauce for ice cream.

The dough went together easily in my mixer with the paddle attachment. I ran out of time to put the recipe together so I left the dough in the freezer for a few days. The night before cooking the shortbread I moved the dough to the refrigerator as recommended

I loved shredding the frozen dough into the pan. This was yet another technique that was new to me. It really gave this heavy dough a light airy quality.

This recipe was delicious. The sweet shortbread and the tart rhubarb were a perfect combination. The only problem was that it did not have the consistency of shortbread. It had a very soft cake like texture especially towards the center of the pan.

I shared a row of bars with my parents. They thought it was a wonderful treat. My mother had purchased rhubarb a few days earlier. She made a warm sauce and poured it over top and she and my father ate it for breakfast. She said if I hadn’t told her it was undercooked that she would have thought that was the way it was supposed to taste; more like a cake then a shortbread.

I will consider making this recipe again next spring but I will cook the bottom crust alone for 15-20 minutes before adding the jam and the top crust to ensure a crisper more shortbread like crunch.

Funny, I guess I completely missed the line that said move it from the freezer to the fridge. Ha! It was a workout to get this grated! Love that you have rhubarb in your garden – as a child we had it in ours, and I miss it! No rhubarb here in Peru!